Sunday, July 17, 2005

The Disease of Conceit

Ain't nothing too discreet / About the disease of conceit - Bob Dylan

Language, being the virus that it is, often makes me sick. These days, not so much from the perpetual misdiagnosis of "conspiracy theory" (conspiracy is a hypothesis, doc; deep politics is the theory), as at the gatekeeping virologists' nerve to call what they do "skepticism."

The Skeptics Society, which claims ownership of the term, defines it as "the application of reason to any and all ideas.... When we say we are 'skeptical,' we mean that we must see compelling evidence before we believe."

Right there we can see the argumentative circularity, and the richness and the weirdness of life that must forever lie beyond the pale for such people. "Show me," they say. Yet evidence compelling to them must necessarily conform to "reason" (in other words, to a trumped-up rationality with control issues), and so all evidence that transgresses reason (or more accurately, puts rationality in its place) is invalidated. In this manner, the paranormal and much of what we call the parapolitical can never be proven to such people. "Show me," they say, and yet these same people are more likely than not to accept official narratives of controversial history without having been shown anything. Rather, it's us, the "conspiracy theorists," who are saying "show me," and meaning it. We're the ones withholding judgement. We're the true skeptics, and I want us to stake a claim on the word.

The society adds that "modern skepticism is embodied in the scientific method, that involves gathering data to formulate and test naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena."

Here the problem narrows, and sharpens, to the reduction of skepticism to scientific method. But much of our experience of the world, even of the "natural" world, cannot be subjected to a scientific method and still retain its meaning for us.

Just last week, scientist Richard Dawkins opened a conference with the caution that the Universe is to weird to understand, and that there is a "narrow range of reality that we judge to be normal." Scientific method is moving uncomfortably beyond the "skeptic," who seems a hide-bound Newtonian from the perspective of our quantum politics.

Have you ever browsed the Skeptic's Dictionary? A word that comes to mind to describe the intellects at play there is credulous. Virtually all that is offered is assurance to those who don't want such things to be true that they needn't worry, and need inquire no further.

For instance, the complete entry for "Xenoglossy" is the "alleged speaking or writing in a language entirely unknown to the speaker. The probability of this happening is about zero." Well, he said, brushing off his hands, that takes care of that.

...a common complaint from the mind-controlled is that they can't get therapists to take them seriously. That is, they say they can only find therapists who want to treat them for their delusions, not help them prove they're being controlled by their government. Thus, it is not likely that the 'mind-controlled CIA zombies' will be accused of having delusions planted in them by therapists, as alien abductees have, since they claim they cannot get therapists to take their delusions seriously.

Either the author did not respect the subject enough to seriously research it, or he did and hopes the reader won't, because it's an absolute fabrication.

I'll let just one example stand for many. (And let's note this: these kind of skeptics must paint with the broadest of brushes, because if only one contrary fact is admitted, everything crumbles.) Dr Valerie Wolf, testifying before the Presidential Commission on Radiation Experiments in 1995, said that:

...in preparation for my testimony at these hearings, I called nearly 40 therapists across the country to find out what they knew about the link between radiation and mind control and to get what other therapists were seeing in clients who had been used in mind control experiments.... Generally, it appears that therapists across the country are finding clients who have been subjected to mind control techniques. The consistency of their stories about the purpose of the mind control and torture techniques such as electric shock, use of hallucinogens, sensory deprivation, spinning, hypnosis, dislocation of limbs and sexual abuse is remarkable. There is almost nothing published on this aspect of mind control used with children and these clients come from all over the country, having had no contact with each other.

In its debunking of "alien abductions," the dictionary never strays from the ET hypothesis, arguing against the probability of travelling interplanetary distances without raising the theoretical likelihood of parallel worlds.

Regarding the late Harvard psychiatrist, Dr John Mack, who took seriously the abduction phenomenon, the dictionary sneers:

...until the good doctor or one of his patients produces physical evidence that abductions have occurred, it seems ore reasonable to believe that he and his patients are deluded or frauds. Of course, the good doctor can hide behind academic freedom and the doctor/patient privacy privilege. He can make all the claims he wants and refuse to back any of them up on the grounds that to do so would be to violate his patients' rights. He can then publish his stories and dare anyone to take away his academic freedom. He is in the position any con person would envy: he can lie without fear of being caught.

Again, the broadest brush is employed - the "good doctor" is a con man - because if they are wrong once, their world slips away.

And there is ample physical evidence for both UFOs and abductions. Another solitary example to stand for many: The case of "Dr X," the French health professional Jacques Vallee introduced to us in Confrontations. When attending to his crying toddler early morning November 2, 1968, he noticed a light outside the child's window. He didn't pay it much attention until his son was asleep again, and then he stepped out on the balcony and observed two large disks moving slowly over neighbouring homes. The objects merged, and a white beam was directed toward the ground below. "Finally the disk made a movement that brought it to a vertical position, and the white beam caught the doctor squarely on the balcony. He heard a bang and the object vanished, leaving only a whitish form like cotton candy."

Afterwards he experienced abdominal pain, and a red, equalateral triangle with sides of six inches in length appeared around his navel. His doctor believed it to be a psychosomatic reaction to his "dream" of an object which was somehow associated with a triangle. "But when the same shape appeared on the abdomen of the child, and when the same phenomena recurred in successive years, the psychosomatic explanation had to be discounted." (A thermographic examination in 1984 found "intense cutaneous erythema of triangular shape, centered over the umbilicus; absence of visible superficial vessel.... resistant to cooling.")

The encounter also accompanied spontaneous healing of a permanent disability on the right side of his body he had incurred ten years before from a mine explosion while in the French army. And this just scratches the weirdness, as Dr X and his wife were subsequently "plagued by poltergeist activity" and by visitations "so fantastic as to stretch credulity, yet they appear to be verifiable by other family members." But let's not invite the rolled eyes of the "skeptic" with such episodes. But it's too late for that. Even the medical records of Dr X and his son are inadmissable as evidence because they do not conform to "reason," and so will not be seriously considered.

Cocksureity seems the hallmark contradiction of such skeptics. Stage magician Penn Jillette is such a one. He says that people should "learn to carry their intelligence the way James Dean carried his cigarette." In other words, as an affectation.

Jillette could have said the way Peabody carried his bowtie, but it wouldn't have been as cool.

2868 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this entry, Jeff. Seems the people I know that rely on much the same thinking are the most close-minded people I have ever known. These people claim to be skeptics yet carry with them everywhere such super-beliefs that they base all their beliefs on. If you're going to be a skeptic you need to believe that beliefs are dangerous - which they are - you need to *not* believe, and believe in unbelief - the only truth is that there is no truth, or that everything is true in some sense. These people just seem, to me, like little shits that have adopted this mindset to uphold a sort of super-normal or life-sustaining faith in knowing that there is nothing more to know than the beliefs that make their lives - however crummy and unfulfilled - superior in their own make-believed stability.

An amazing read that completely blows the type of belief system we're dealing with in The Skeptics Dictionary, Penn Jilette, et cetera, seems to me to be Robert Anton Wilson's Natural Law - Or Don't Put a Rubber On Your Willy. In which he tears apart the belief systems of such people in an astounding way, using general semantics and language in such a way that it doesn't make you sick, it infact cures illness of the mind and makes it healthy for true skepticism, which is a wild ride many of these fair-is-foul mask-anti-mask up-side-down skeptics could never even dream in their self-limiting, dreary, boring head-space.

"Explain this happening!" "It must have a `natural' cause." \ "It must have a `supernatural' cause." / Let these two asses be set to grind corn. May, might, must, should, probably, may be, we may safely assume, ought, it is hardly question- able, almost certainly-poor hacks! let them be turned out to grass! Proof is only possible in mathematics, and mathe- matics is only a matter of arbitrary conventions. And yet doubt is a good servant but a bad master; a perfect mistress, but a nagging wife. "White is white" is the lash of the overseer: "white is black" is the watchword of the slave. The Master takes no heed. The Chinese cannot help thinking that the octave has 5 notes. The more necessary anything appears to my mind, the more certain it is that I only assert a limitation. I slept with Faith, and found a corpse in my arms on awaking; I drank and danced all night with Doubt, and found her a virgin in the morning. (crowley book of lies)

The important thing to remember though is that the 'weird' (for want of a better term) is a world of counter-rationality, where fakery and the imaginal and the untrue blend seamlessly into the real and the verifiable. This is why it is so hard to pin down. People pursuing truth can end up following a lie without ever knowing how or when it made the switch. The only thing to be is always skeptical of everything - even the 'alternatives'.

Yes there are weird, covert bizarre things out there, but there are also attention-seeking wackos, and what seems to be forgotten is that the dividing line between them tends to be blurry at best. Often the one attracts the other,Trickster fashion, so that we have a mix of the truly odd, the hysterically imagined and the frankly fake all going on at once and all blending into one another, becoming one another and redefining themselves as we watch.

To deny that is to misunderstand on a massive scale what it is we are looking at here.

To give an example. A large number of abductees have very obvious personality problems, and manifest obvious attention-seeking behaviour. Some clearly make up the stories of their encounters (viz 'Linda Cortile' and the 'Brooklyn Bridge' nonsense) either for reasons of attention-seeking or for commercial gain or both.

But at the same time there is a liquid core of genuine strangeness washing around here, and it washes around even the most obvious fakers, tingeing their stories with aspects that seem to defy any rational dismissal. Evern a conscious faker who sets out only to trick can end up accidentally being genuine. The fake and the real entwine around each other, mirror each other, almost become each other, and we cannot prise them apart.

This is what makes it so hard for our western mindset to deal with. We try to find 'the reality', where ultimately there isn't any, or at least there is no one fixed reality, but rather a changing landscape which shifts as much in response to the perceiver as the perceived. The awful truth is that if we look for something - space ships, suicide bombers, certitude, paedophiles we will find them; we may even cause them to be for all we know. This isn't hard-edge journalism, this is creating the reality you are searching for. So it might make sense to look for something better!

And if you really want to do your head in look at the alternative climate sites.

http://www.climateaudit.org/http://www.john-daly.com/

There seems - according to all evidence I have seen - to be currently no significant or unusual warming taking place. The ice sheets are only melting and growing as they always do, and not thinning in any unusual way. The sea levels are NOT rising. There are - contrary to the popular presentation - numerous scientists who are in fact very skeptical of the entire concept, and the Mann 'hockey stick' chart showing massive warming in the 20th C has been criticised as being deceptive due to his bizarre usage of tree-ring data and his inexplicable rejection of the medieval warm period. Attempts to verify his foundation data have failed and everything in fact is still very very unknown.

The image of certitude is simply mythic in this case as in the case of the 'suicide bombers'. It's all a bit of smoke and mirrors. But the scary thing is - if we all keep believing it for long enough then maybe it will be true!

It is much better/safer/saner to have ideas than beliefs. So many people walking around with a barking mass of misconceptions they call a world-view, and forgetting to remind themselves "I could be wrong".

Hitler was a man who forgot to remind himself "I could be wrong". George Bush is a man who has forgotten to remind himself "I could be wrong".

Man, I've been following this same train of thinking really hard lately. Last night I actually found the word you're looking for: it's methodological or philosophical skepticism. It's where "one critically examines whether the knowledge and perceptions one has are true, and whether or not one can ever be said to have true knowledge." As opposed to scientific skepticism (which is what the skeptic's dictionary follows) where "one does not accept the veracity of claims until solid evidence is produced in accordance with the scientific method."

This distinction has always plagued me because I am very much skeptical, so much so that I'm skeptical of the skeptics - or rather the scientific skeptics. Philosophical skepticism seems to be more "pure" to my way of thinking, but also leads you into the tail-spin of relentlessly questioning everything, even your own questioning.

Where does it end? That's what I wonder. I've been going so far with it lately that I'm questioning the truth of language itself to ever adequately describe experience, nevermind experience itself. It's forcing me to dissolve a lot of assumptions I've always held but refused to look at. I don't know where it's going, but the process is releasing a ton of creative energy and sharpening my thinking processes tenfold.

Right, Tim. I've been pulling some old philosophical texts off my shelves, because part of what we're doing is a philosphical project, specifically epistemology and hermeneutics: how can we know, and how can we understand?

Scientific skepticism is a dead end. Philosophical skepticism only appears to be a dead end. It has lots of interesting trapdoors and secret entranceways.

We'd have to become knowledgeable of a whole other level of consciousness before the questions would begin to disappear. As it is, our level of consciousness only creates more questions when confronted with 'answers'.

Philosophical skepticism was at its peak during the period c. 1500-1700 (also known as the rise of the modern world.)

Science as we know it arose in large part because people couldn't handle that level of doubt. They wanted *something* they could rely on completely, and if it was only experimentally verifiable theories about the physical would that could be taken as reliable to that degree, that was all they would believe in.

Religion, occultism, and any other belief system that lay outside the framework of experimental verification was either discarded, marginalized, or forced into a pseudo-scientific straitjacket. (Which is the source of creationism and the other last-ditch attempts by traditional religion to hold on to believers by claiming scientific legitimacy.)

Meanwhile, relativity and quantum physics came along and plunged us back into the state of radical doubt that we'd been trying to escape from since the late 1700's. But since this is happening in the very heart of science, which most non-scientists still take as the motherlode of experimental validation, it hasn't altogether been noticed.

My own take on things largely goes back to the sort of distinction between physics and engineering that John W. Campbell used to write about when he was editor of Astounding Science Fiction: Physicists want to explain everything. Engineers just want to know what works.

It's amazing how much crap you can cut through by going on the basis of "what works."

But even that isn't the final word. Occultism, for example, has a trickster nature. It will work for you up to a point -- but the moment you come to rely on it or think you can trust it completely, it will pull the chair out from under you and leave you sprawled on the floor. (There's an article somewhere by Phil Dick on what happened when he began to us the I Ching for all his daily decision-making. Huge mistake, that.)

What it comes to is that we as a species are having to get used to living with radical uncertainty, the more so as we expand beyond nature and into a world of our own making, and we really aren't very happy about it. We just don't have much choice.

For the past few days I've been living on "paranormal" sites as a debunker. A majority of the people, after seeing the apparitions revealed to be something very ordinary, continue to insist otherwise.

Ellie H put it well: "creating the reality you are searching for"There's just too much information, and too many questions for the ordinary mind to grasp, so most people find a niche to crawl into and stay there come hell or high water.

So doesn't it make sense that anyone who rises above this tendency, into a realm of true 'reasonable thinking', immediately becomes an outsider?Here we have your Skeptics Society, twisting reality to their own design.. and remaining part of the larger irrational crowd.

thanks. this and related posts have sort of defined for me some of the new paradigms we've been dealing with, at least since the shock of 2000's stolen election .. and as this blog points out, might have been going on for much longer (um, always?).

before now, the operative distinction in making sense of weirdness seems to have been between the so-called scientific method and uncritical crackpot acceptance. both extremes may serve someone's interests, but each is ultimately personally unsatisfying.

i'm relatively non-erudite re: specific types of skepticism, but there is always common sense and open-mindedness -- which might, together, amount to intuitive skepticism. some things can be delinated, some can't. i've stopped worrying about that distinction, much. I just try to rely on a mixture of rationality and intuition -- and bring the best I can muster, in terms of human compassion.

and try to remember that there are stranger realities than any i am capable of imagining. which is one reason i have been very appreciative of this and related sites. when the going gets weird ...

the common thread in some of this is a recognition of relative ignorance -- which, on my own part, grows every day. i used to know more than i do now. and thank god for that.

so i suppose one antidote to the disease of conceit is in taking on as little conceptual encumbrance as possible.

at the same time, that doesn't mean it's not a good idea to piece together clues as best as possible. the literal meaning of conspiracy has to do with 'breathing together'; I'd like to think that applies to inter-related ideas being allowed breathing space to bounce around. the best meaning of conspiratorial thinking is in allowing connections to appear, without dismissing such out of hand or hoping for particular results.

of course, there are those whose interests are not served by the casting of light and the connection of dots (doh); and yes, casting light on and calling attention to their machinations is part of the process of exercising common sense.

sometimes, i would personally prefer to call this a mission of righteous intution, as much as rigorous intuition. but that's where i have to be careful not to subvert my own intentions by becoming too immersed in the desire to see just desserts dished. but in the end, i have to admit, that's one of the real motivations for getting to the botttom of things: to see justice served. such is one of own biases in expanding understanding of parapolitics and non-consensus realities.

Scientific skepticism is not dead. And scientic method is not dead. What is dying is the ability of this current generation to reliably and accurately describe what they are experiencing or to HONESTLY describe what they are experiencing. We would rather scapegoat and project rather than confront truths.

The whole world is washed over in lies and disinformation right now. Thank your intel agencies and money grubbing religionists for most of that. Just like in ancient Rome, the increasing lunacy is simply a byproduct of the lies of protectionists trying to keep the many in a state of poverty and confusion.

One man's UFO is just another man's black budget spy plane.

One man's ghost is just another man's waking dream.

One man's strange perception of coincidental strangeness in the world is just another man's dawning realization of the relationship of the microcosm to the macrocosm.

Jeff - I can't begin to say how much I appreciate your appreciation, because I don't see much of it. Occasionally, someone on DU indicates they value my research. But my wilder tangents just go right by most people (except for my husband and kids, who've had years of training.)

It's incredible that you've been able to create this little corner of the blogosphere where it's possible to say things that can't normally be uttered, much less understood, and engage in dialogs on topics that aren't normally even considered worth taking seriously.

I DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHINGThis remark was made, in these very words, by John Gribbin, physics editor of New Scientist magazine, in a BBC-TV debate with Malcolm Muggeridge, and it provoked incredulity o the part of most viewers. It seems to be a hangover of the medieval Catholic era that causes most people, even the educated, to think that everybody must "believe" something or other, that if one is not a theist, one must be a dogmatic atheist, and if one does not think Capitalism is perfect, one must believe fervently in Socialism, and if one does not have blind faith in X, one must alternatively have blind faith in not-X or the reverse of X.

My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any need to think about anything and might be considered clinically dead under current medical standards, where absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended.

My attitude is identical to that of Dr. Gribbin and the majority of physicists today, and is known in physics as "the Copenhagen Interpretation," because it was formulated in Copenhagen by Dr. Niels Bohr and his co-workers c. 1926-28. The Copenhagen Interpretation is sometimes called "model agnosticism" and holds that any grid we use to organize our experience of the world is a model of the world and should not be confused with the world itself. Alfred Korzybski, the semanticist, tried to popularize this outside physics with the slogan, "The map is not the territory." Alan Watts, a talented exegete of Oriental philosophy, restated it more vividly as "The menu is not the meal."

Here is a link to nobel laureate and Cambridge University professor Brian Josephson's pages,http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/He has some excellent things to say about skeptics such as the propaganda activities of PSICOP - he's got to be a good name to throw back at those "rationalists" who only allow discussion on their own terms.

I agree that scientific skepticism isn't dead. In fact it's the best and highest form of critical thinking available to us.

But what usually passes for 'scientific skepticism' is no such thing. It's anti-scientific debunking; a crusade against the 'unacceptable', every bit as hysterical and counter-rational as the Inquisition. It's a part of the creeping Big Brother world, where difference of any kind, particularly free thought, is being marginalised.

To give an example. A large number of abductees have very obvious personality problems, and manifest obvious attention-seeking behaviour.

Heh, the ones with "attention seeking behavior" are the ones getting the attention. As such, they cannot be said to be representative of the phenonemon only the ones most likely to be noticed. Many abductees do not seek such attention. In fact, I'd say most. After all, it takes a certain kind of personality to deal with the repercussions of being public with stories like these. Sometimes you even get run over by a car (RIP, John Mack)

The bizarre factor grows as you zoom out of the picture...the abductees describe experiments that sound like mind control experiments which sound like Satanic abuse rituals....round and round. Screen memories? Well, maybe, but then there are some cases with physical traces and witnesses. And in each, there are "attention getters" who seem to be giving out disinformation or are just disturbed.

You are right about Cortile, though. I was so interested in that case...but when I read the book I had to believe I was missing something. ALL of the "evidence" of the other witnesses came from "anonymous sources" or these guys working with...I mean kidnapping Cortile. It was elaborate, and the inclusion of others in the plot seems to rule out pure delusion on Cortile's part, but why did Hopkins put so much stock in all this anonymous evidence? Really, don't make the skeptibunkers jobs so easy for them.

The climate change debate is confusing only until you find out that Fred Singer and his front organizations are funded by the big oil companies to spend their time debunking global warming.

For those of us old enough, direct observation will help. Three decades ago, cities didn't have "cooling stations," "sun glare alerts" or "pollution indexes." Trees didn't grow in the Antarctic. On mountaintops, glaciers and snowcaps are now receding. Buildings in Alaska and Siberia are tilting as the tundra melts. Most scientists say we are in the middle of a mass species extinction.

It puzzles me that the fact that climate change has happened periodically throughout Earth's history is being cited in an effort to debunk the fact that it's happening right now! Whether or not human beings caused it, we will still have to cope with it. The most primitive and least effective form of coping with adversity is called "denial"! No matter what scenario you paint for Earth's future, it will go easier on us if we have some petroleum reserves left.

I don't think the 'climate change' debate is as easy to polarise as that. I have no axe to grind, and I am not in anyone's pay, but I have looked at all the data, and the case for man-made climate change just isn't there in anything like the certain way we are led to believe.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a lifelong Green. I was a member of CND all my life. I'm a leftie ex-hippie, and until recently I was actively campaigning for awareness of global warming. I totally believe in the cause of saving the environment, and I'm no fan of fossil fuels and the damage they undoubtedly do.

But in eveything I want to know the truth, and I don't like being led by the nose, and I don't like group-thinking, even if I am in the group. I don't believe that telling a lie to achieve something true is okay. In my experience, even well-intentioned public lies are just in the end about distancing us all from our own realities and about some kind of indoctrination. If we need to guard our environment (and I think we do) then let's do it for real reasons and not whipped up mass hysteria that could be based on a great big lie.

I don't know for sure if the 'global warming' idea is a big lie yet, but I suspect it might be, and I don't want to see debate on it crushed by exactly the kind of consensus group-think we are all supposed to be opposing. We have to be prepared to challenge the things we believe in as much as those we don't - or we are all just kidding ourselves!!!

So, don't shoot this down with cries of 'debunking' and other emotional language until you have looked more coolly and closely at the whole story.

Let me tell you, I have come to think 'global warming' could be a kind of trick being pulled on us.

My reasons? Just for starters -

1.The science is dodgy since CO2 is such a minor greenhouse gas that even if it were increased it oughtn't to make much difference. And deeper than that, there is little sign of any serious warming, and most of that 'evidence' tends to be anecdotal - like the stories of trees growing in places they didn't before.

2. The famous Mann graph, showing massive warming this century, has been shown - repeatedly - to have been constructed with highly dodgy data. Mann himself is beginning to repudiate it, yet it was the central pillar of the whole warming argument!

3. The warming that has occurred isn't consistent with the pattern of CO2 generated warming. It's too small, in the wrong place and is far more readily explained as normal climate-fluctuation, produced by the end of the mini ice age. If you look at the original station reports from round the world, there is little or no evidence of general warming.

4. The effect of Urban Heat Islands is never discussed (warming generated by big cities which can alter the global averages without indicating any actual base warming of the climate).

5. Sea levels are profoundly not rising, and the 'evidence' that they are is often misinterpreted or faked. For example, the effects of erosion and the post-glacial subsidance are often presented as 'sea level rising' when they are clearly not so.

There's more - much more. But even this is enough to make us look again and start to wonder isn't it?

I want to know how reliable is this 'warming' data? And I want to know because I have found that the history of 'global warming' all too often dissolves on close inspection - like the Warren Commission - into pseudoscience and semi-science that seems to be being sold to alarm and delude people.

Pictures of ice sheets collapsing into the sea are broadcast, but what they don't mention is that these particular ice sheets grow and collapse on a cycle every twenty years or so.

Stories of thinning ice in the Antarctic are told, but closer inspection reveals the ice is thinning in some places and thickening elsewhere, and that this is observed to be a very normal phenomenon.

In my experience what looks cut and dried and conclusive on first analysis becomes dubious, ambiguous or even false on closer analysis. And we all know what that can signify.

I think maybe -just maybe - in this one, the trick might be on us. The forces of 'reaction' could be accidentally telling the truth for once.

For one thing, I can't help wondering - why is Blair backing this single element of the 'environment' so much? Why is 'climate change' given so much air time when most - much more urgent - environmental problems are just airbrushed out of the corporate media worldview? This alone should make us wary.

Is it maybe a bid to help nudge nuclear power back on the agenda? They have started talking about it already haven't they.

What I want to show you is that the issues of 'climate change' are a lot more murky than the media make us think. Yes, the fossil fuel lobby is behind the debunking - but that doesn't necessarily mean they are wrong, and so far as I can make out, this time, they could easily be right!

I know you are all open-minded people here. Don't take my word for it. Check out the sites I posted, read everything; get to the basic data and tell me if your eyes aren't opened like mine were. If they aren't then tell me why and I will rethink. I'm only interested in finding the truth, and if I'm wrong I'll be happy to admit it.

Honestly, when it comes to the Trickster sometimes black really is white, and light really is dark, which is why it is so treacherous trying to find the real way.

That was excellent reasoning and writing Ellie. And I am not saying that from any particular position, because I have not adopted one on the subject. This is what mankind so desparately needs - real objectivity - real honesty. For what it is worth, thank-you very much.

For all their pathologies of rational thought, their hipocrisy and self-congratulation, the majority of the Movement Skeptics are brought together by one motivation: Ridicule. They live to ridicule and humiliate other people, and have devised a system whereby they can escape accountability for their rudeness. When one insults someone in the name of Science, the offense is immediately forgiven, just as many a Christian assumes that no matter how heinous the crime they may plan, Jesus Christ will deliver them from punishment.

One need not do very much thinking to be a Skeptic In Good Standing, either, since hundreds of pre-composed arguments are available for the choosing; cut-and-paste works fine against a patsy who doesn't read skep lit. The only thing their method lacks is the Fundamentalists' habit of citing a chapter and verse number after the quote is delivered. But they have copied the smug self-satisfaction reflex to the neuron.

Refute them in even the smallest detail, and they will hound you to the ends of the Earth, accuse you of holocaust denial, Scientology, child molestation, and -- *gasp!* -- irrationality.

Almost all movement Skeptics claim to want to enlighten the fools who are beneath their dignity, but I haven't seen it happen yet, and I was a movement Skeptic way back in the mid-80s. Public humiliation and scorn are not very effective teaching tools, and no peer review is necessary to validate this observation. This "angry-young-geek" act is one of the main reasons I left the movement. It is distressing to watch a group of otherwise intelligent adults behave like swaggering fifth graders circling around a lost second grader they have cut out of the herd.

Skepticism itself is one of the most powerful "tools" a person can use to improve his/her understanding of the world. The movement called "Skepticism" works at cross-purposes to it. The defenders of the Citadel of Reason have degenerated into a pack of drunken bikers, and the world is a meaner and darker place for it.

As I recall the primary source for the Dr X story was a 2-part article in Flying Saucer Review by the late French researcher Aime Michel.Unfortunatly, I long ago disposed of my collection of that magazine.I think it is available on CD.

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